The Phone Call Part I
by Milo Pressman
Summary: Will Jack get the courage to call Kate ? Sequel to


PART I  
  
Jack sat in his office looking at the phone as if it held clues about what he should say when she answered, if and when he summoned up the nerve to actually call her. If she was even there. If she took the call. The feeling of being sixteen again and trying to work up the nerve to call a girl was not pleasant. Especially since he'd lived with Kate, for God's sake, for almost two years. And now his palms were sweaty and he was rehearsing conversations in his mind. It was 5:15. Probably too late. She probably had plans for tonight anyway.  
  
What were his plans? The thought made him smile. Was the four-day old Chinese food crammed into the refrigerator section of the mini-bar still safe to eat? Was there a game on tonight? Did he care which sport or which team it was? He'd turn it on regardless, just for background noise. And he had shopping to do, he thought grimly. A couple of six-packs, some microwave popcorn, a weeks' worth of heroin, shaving cream. He'd go back to that poor excuse for a bar he'd visited already, what, twice in the last two weeks? And that was it, he'd have to find a new dealer somewhere else, didn't want to establish a predictable pattern. Shouldn't be too hard: he knew now where all of it came from, who sold crap and who didn't, their distribution networks and major suppliers down to which gangs controlled sales at the street level in different parts of LA. Just don't get recognized because Hector would pay very good money to find out where he went to score. He just had to deal with the supply issue until he had a chance and the time and the energy to take the whole thing on. Then a bad week or so and he'd be all right again. Maybe he should wait until then to call her.  
  
If he met her, what in the world would he talk to her about? He'd been gone almost a year. The prep work and then being inserted in the Javier cartel and establishing his rep and moving on to the Salazars, like a baseball player moving up from AAA to the majors. What could he say? He didn't want to hear about her new boyfriend, and he was sure she had one. It was inconceivable that someone like Kate could walk around for a year and not catch someone's eye; the men of America weren't that stupid. He didn't want to think about somebody else taking care of her, learning about her, seeing her smile, waking up next to her. He got up restlessly and walked over to the side chair by the conference table. They didn't even have their old disagreements to talk about anymore. There was nothing holding them together, just something that used to be there. Some memories. That was it.  
  
For a while, when he was gone, he'd tried to hold onto something with her. When he was alone, at night, when it was quiet, he'd allowed himself to go back and remember one thing, one conversation or one day or one night with her, and he'd held on to that one thing and examined it and polished it and turned it around for a while, and it had helped.  
  
But then as things went on, and he got in deeper, and he did what he needed to do...when he thought of her all he could imagine was what she would say if she knew about his days' activities. And soon he couldn't face the thought of what she would say if she knew, if she'd seen. And so he didn't take the thoughts out any more. In fact, he buried them as far down and as deep as they could possibly go, until everything he knew or thought about was narrowed down to the job, to keeping his cover tight, to finding out what he needed to know to betray the people he worked with and ate with and lived with every day. Even the people who had covered his back and saved his life. Once the memories were inaccessible, then he could do it. He could be as hard as he needed to be. Then very little touched him anymore. And what did touch him he took care of with the needle, and that helped bury things too.  
  
And when she returned the favor, and asked him if he'd met anyone, what was he going to say about Claudia? How, exactly, did one explain someone like Claudia to someone like Kate? He could just imagine it. "Yes, I had a lover while I was gone, Kate. Actually, she lived with my boss. I was the guy she had on the side. We would sneak around behind his back, because if he'd found out he would have shot both of us."  
  
That was one way of looking at the truth of it, but it wasn't everything at all. It made her sound like a tramp and him sound like an opportunistic creep who'd just wanted to get laid. In his whole life he'd never slept with another man's wife or girlfriend, but he'd done it now. (Well, what hadn't he done, now?) And he'd done it because he'd wanted and needed her in a determined, an almost desperate way he'd never wanted Kate or his wife or...anyone else. Try explaining that one. He'd risked his life to be with her, and she'd done the same for him. He couldn't make Kate understand how having Claudia had saved what was left of him after months of working for Ramon, not without also explaining what working for Ramon involved. He'd go to her when he'd just finished a job (if they were lucky and Hector was out of town, or even just away for a few hours), sometimes feeling sick to his stomach with shame, and the adrenaline still pumping through him, and he'd go to her and she'd make him feel like he was a human being again. And he'd left her there .  
Jack walked back over to the desk and started straightening up, putting papers in piles, throwing out empty coffee cups, putting pens and pencils away. The hardest part was that it all came back to him. He'd told Kate that it was time for her to move on, that he couldn't give her what she needed or wanted or deserved. And now he was going to have to face it: that was exactly what she had done. Assuming it was one thing but now it was time to actually have it confirmed.  
  
The thing was, neither of them had ever said to the other "I don't love you anymore". Never. For them it had always been an issue of "I don't love you enough", and most of the time...ok, all of the time...it had been Jack who was saying it. A question of whether they could live together, whether they wanted to do the same things with their lives, whether she could stand the separations, the tension he radiated that came from the constant danger he was in, and his periodic, silent retreats into his shell. And then there was something he couldn't go beyond anymore. The thought of losing anyone else he loved paralyzed him. So he could only go so far with Kate and then he had to stop. He only felt comfortable living in the present, without commitment or even discussion of anything long range. His comfort zone started getting shaky around six months out. Kate had to know what the roadmap was. And she wanted a family of her own.  
  
He decided that he needed to get this over with, to call her and see how she was doing and then he'd know it was really, finally, over. And then he could focus again. Because there were other things he needed to do.  
  
He dialed Kate's office number. Not the private line, the public one. What if he used the other one and said "Hi Kate, its me, Jack." and she said, "Jack who?" Better to have her secretary pick it up, give Kate a chance to think for a moment before she had to talk to him. Maybe she'd just tell the secretary to tell him she was out. Then the secretary put him through.  
  
"Kate, is now a good time? Its me, Jack." The line was quiet for a moment.  
  
"You are not going to believe this" she answered, "but I was just thinking about you. Of course it's a good time. Are you here? Are you back? Are you all right?"  
  
"I'm in LA and I'm fine". (Not a complete lie. She'd meant "Are you calling me from a hospital somewhere?" By that standard, he was fine.)  
  
"How are you, Kate?"  
  
"Strung out from a really bad day, but its starting to look up." He smiled. It was an old joke between them.  
  
"I was wondering, if you haven't got other plans, maybe you'd like to get together for a drink?"  
  
She mentioned a restaurant they'd gone to a lot, a place that had live music on the weekends and decent food.  
  
"Should I pick you up?" he asked.  
  
"Better if both of us drove there. Dad's in the office today too."  
  
"Good point". The sight of Jack Bauer set Bob Warner's teeth on edge. Too many bad memories about the worst day in the man's life, of CTU, of his other daughter, Marie, were permanently connected in Bob's mind to Jack Bauer. Much better not to risk seeing Bob, who's office was down the hall from Kate's.  
  
"I'll see you in, what, an hour?"  
  
"OK" A pause. "Jack, its good to hear your voice again."  
  
He swallowed. "Its good to hear you too, Kate." 


End file.
